


Leave the Sun Behind Me

by yeats



Category: Dawson's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Vampire Diaries Fusion, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One airport encounter among many between two people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave the Sun Behind Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waltzmatildah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/gifts).



> title from "this time tomorrow" by the kinks.

Christmas Eve, and Logan International Airport’s a warzone.

Packs of taxi cabs flood the curbside dropoff at Terminal E, a dizzying caravan of rearview window air fresheners and arbitrary fare surcharges. Pacey, ferried by a discrete town car, picks his way through the chaos, small suitcase rolling deftly behind him.

Inside the terminal, it’s even worse. Someone’s programmed the thermostat by looking at a calendar and not a thermometer, and the room is easily ten degrees too hot for this warm December. The security line stretches back as far as the eye can see: wailing babies straining in their parents’ arms; teenagers texting furiously, unconscious of the world; red-faced men struggling to steer overstuffed luggage. A seething mass of humanity, inching forwards amidst a cloud of frustration and under-parka sweat.

Pacey leisurely approaches the security agent -- a middle-aged woman with dishwasher blond hair and an underlying air of nervousness only barely hidden by the authority pressed into her uniform. 

He adopts his best supplicant’s pose: hands loosely clasped in front of him, posture slightly leaned forwards, a small, almost bashful smile tugging at his lips. The wolf in sheeps’ clothing, as someone once called it. 

“Good evening, Brenda,” he says, reading off her badge. “That’s a lovely name.”

“Can I help you, sir?” The look she gives him is mostly wary, but there’s a flicker of gullibility at the edges. 

And that’s all Pacy needs. 

He leans forward, holding her by the forearm. She flinches at his cold hand, makes to protest, but he catches her eyes. “It’s all right,” he tells her. Power buzzes through the silky cadence of his voice. “We’re old friends.”

Her eyes go wide and trusting. “Old friends,” she echoes.

“Exactly,” he says. “And you’re going to let me through. For old time’s sake.” 

He hold her gaze for another moment, and watches as her pupils narrow to the size of pin-points. 

“All right?” 

She nods. He drops her arm. 

With a smile, she unhooks the security lane rope to usher him around the metal detectors. “Right this way, sir.” The slow, almost somnambulant edge to her her tone is barely detectible. 

Pacey grins. “Thanks, Brenda. Merry Christmas.” He skates past the line, ducking left instead of right, leaving the masses behind.

The ticket in his hand is from a budget airline he’d never heard of, for a flight that takes off six hours from now to somewhere in the West Indies. He purchased it this morning, mere moments after receiving her message. At the time, it had felt like a random selection, just something that would put him in the right place at the right time -- but now, as he looks down at the ticket, he sees the name of his destination, and remembers sighting that warm, green breast of land amidst the jewel-toned ocean from the deck of a sailing ship with her beside him, several lifetimes ago. And nothing with them is ever random, really.

It’s a coach fare, but it’s only the work of another moment, a whispered word and a bit of compulsion, to pass through the doors of Air France’s first-class lounge. 

Inside, the chaos of the terminal drops away entirely, replaced with the quiet whirl of jazz Christmas carols and the inaudible but palpable aura of wealth. Light wood panels the walls and Pacey’s loafers sink into the soft carpet like bone-white sand at an exotic beach. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the runway and Massachusetts Bay beyond, and there’s a full bar stocked with fine wines and amber-colored liquors. 

“Good evening, sir.” A young man approaches him with a tray of champagne flutes. “May I take your bag?”

“Yes, thank you.” Pacey exchanges his suitcase for a glass of champagne, takes a shallow sip. The bubbles fizz and pop against his teeth. 

“Would you like to take a seat in the dining area? We’re about to begin dinner service.”

Pacey opens his mouth to reply -- but then he catches sight of an unmistakeable figure in one of the chair by the window, and anything he might have said falls away. That dark fall of hair, the delicately curved neck that’s haunted his dreams since 1698. 

Even after all this time, she’ll never be anything less than breathtaking. 

He leaves the waiter without another word, goes and stands behind her.

“Mistress Josephine Potter,” he says. “As I live and breathe.”

This close, he can hear the cadence of her heartbeat speed up. 

The chair swivels around. Pacey takes in each element as it presents itself before him: the long, lean line of her legs; the tapered fit of her black dress (she’s finally gotten around to matching her hemlines to the decade, thanks be to God); her pale, slender hands, delicate as white doves in her lap; the bracelet (originally her mother’s) that Jen charmed for her in lieu of a daylight ring. And finally, her face, with that half-smile that always suggested there was something she knew about Pacey but just hadn’t seen fit to tell. 

(There usually was.)

He knows he’s staring. He can’t bring himself to care. He tells himself it’s all right, since she’s staring back.

“Pacey,” she says at last. She doesn’t smile all the way, but he can tell from her eyes that she’s happy to see him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Well, you know me.” Pacey rubs at his jaw, though he hasn’t had a beard in years. “I may be a fool, but when a pretty girl sends me a letter with a time and a place in it.... I’m not that big a fool.”

She huffs a small laugh.

Pacey tears his gaze away long enough to say a quick word to the elder gentleman sitting in the next armchair, who promptly vacates his seat. 

“Pacey,” Joey clucks, but there’s no real heat behind it.

“No worries,” Pacey says. “I just gave him a hot stock tip. He’ll thank me tomorrow.”

He sits down, tugs the chair over through the carpet to get just that much closer to her. He brings his champagne to his lips, but stops when he sees the liquid in her glass -- a deep, sinful crimson, with a glossy sheen. 

She follows his gaze. “Be my guest,” she says, offering it to him.

Pacey just leans forwards. 

“Ugh, you’re still so melodramatic,” she says. 

“Says the girl scheduling meetings in airports like a Soviet spy.”

“Do you want some, or?”

“Always,” Pacey says, opens his lips.

She rolls her eyes, but relents, scooting forwards to hold the glass up to Pacey’s mouth -- the same action he'd done for her, the night she became a vampire. The silver charms of her bracelet brush Pacey’s chin; he lowers his lips, tries to match the exact mark she’d left on the rim of the glass. He sips long and deep, eyes fluttering shut for just a moment as the taste hits the back of his throat.

He watches her watch him swallow.

“Well?” she says once he’s finished. 

He catches his tongue over his bottom lip. Draws the moment out a little longer. “Rayas Chateaneuf-du-Pape 1990,” he says at last. “Blended with O-negative.”

“O-positive,” she corrects. "There's a bistro in Paris with a supplier in a Bordeaux hospital." 

“Fancy blend, for the daughter of a Puritan.”

She rolls her eyes. “I haven’t been that girl in a long time.”

“No,” Pacey says slowly. “You haven’t.”

Rather than replying to that, though, she flags down the waiter, and orders him a glass of her “special vintage” as well. He wonders if she’s afraid of what he’ll say next -- if she’s worried he’ll ask her if she’s seen Dawson lately (he knows she hasn’t), or if she still remembers what Jen told them, the night they couldn’t save her from the flames (he knows she does). 

In truth, there’s only one question whose answer he's ever really cared about. It’s the one he asks every year, when she flies into town on December 24th and they meet like this. 

_Are you ready to come home, yet?_

The waiter comes and refills both their glasses. Outside, a jet trundles down the runway, casting up orange- and green-lights that catch in the surface of the wine. 

He holds the neck of his glass between his index and middle finger. His ring knocks dully against the side. He knocks again, for good luck, and watches as ripples shiver outwards.

When he looks up, she’s looking at him, with that same half-smile.

“What?” he says.

For a moment, he thinks this is it, that this is the year everything changes. That she’ll finally take Jen’s dying wish to heart, and both of them can start _living_ instead of merely existing in this macabre undeath that sees her traveling circles around the globe and him, reliving his life in Capeside every seventy years. 

But in the end, she just shakes her head. And he knows that her answer’s the same as it always is: _Ask me again next year._

Instead, she raises her glass. “Merry Christmas, Pacey Witter,” she says.

He clinks his glass to hers. “Merry Christmas, Jo.”

They sit together until Joey's flight back to Paris at dawn -- in the midst of people rushing around the world, the two of them with nothing but time.

**Author's Note:**

> i realize that this is a super bizarre gift, but i saw that you liked both AUs and angst, and i realized that an alternate universe was the only way i could think of to make pacey and joey's canon resolution more angsty. digging around your journal a bit revealed that we're both big tvd fans, so naturally that means pacey and joey are vampires from 17th century colonial massachusetts. obviously. this was meant to be a lot longer and plottier, but real life health issues intervened. i hope you like it anyway -- happy holidays!


End file.
